Posted
by
kdawson
on Monday November 10, 2008 @06:54PM
from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-pix dept.

SpuriousLogic sends in a sad note from the BBC: "NASA says its Phoenix lander on the surface of Mars has gone silent and is almost certainly dead. Engineers have not heard from the craft since Sunday 2 November when it made a brief communication with Earth. Phoenix, which landed on the planet's northern plains in May, had been struggling in the increasing cold and dark of an advancing winter. The US space agency says it will continue to try to contact the craft but does not expect to hear from it."

> Did it sing "Bicycle Built for Two," slowing down and getting deeper as it ran out of power? Because that would have been awesome.

VICTORY!

The most Illustrious Council of Elders has declared tomorrow a planetary day of celebration. K'breel, Speaker for the Council, spake thus:

"Triumphant Citizens, today all our gelsacs are engorged with delight! After a 160-day campaign in the arctic wastelands of our world, our day of victory has come. For the past thirty days, this latest terror from the blue world has been able to do nothing more but wave its pendulous plumb bob [slashdot.org] at us.

Its relentless chanting of the Day-Z War Song - which our linguists have assured us is about a war machine driven so half-mad with emotion that it would enslave two of its creators for use as propulsion mechanisms - has finally ended. The Day-Z War Song is sung no more.

Rejoice, podmates, for victory is ours! We answer in the affirmative, for we are able!"

(A small group of dissidents in the Press Corps reminded the Speaker that the Invader on the Plains had begun to stir [nasa.gov], and that The Twin at the Crater was rapidly advancing to the southeast [nasa.gov] after having made an obscene gesture. They were about to inquire as to what progress had been made over the past two and a half years against these threats, but K'Breel had already torn the antenna shaft from the Arctic Invader's lifeless hulk and made a shishkebab of their gelsacs before their question could be been fully heard.)

I wonder if we would be better off putting up solar array around mars, and then beams power down. These landers and rovers could then have super capacitors for storage.This approach would allow us to re-use a major subsystem across multiple systems.
The nice advantage is that it would allow future explorers to have power all over the planet.